Organizing the Perfect Design

I used to be an artist when I was younger. I remember the days when all I would do is do a paint by number, one after another. Unfortunately, those days are long gone, but nonetheless, I retained some skills that are definitely applicable today when it comes to design. Rhythm, flow, and togetherness…

Reading Response to Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Chapter 6, “The Meaning of Composition”

Introduction

I used to be an artist when I was younger. I remember the days when all I would do is do a paint by number, one after another. Unfortunately, those days are long gone, but nonetheless, I retained some skills that are definitely applicable today when it comes to design. Rhythm, flow, and togetherness. These are three huge components to design that designers must account for when making a product or creating a picture.

Authors Kress and Van Leeuwen touch on rhythm, flow, and togetherness, but talk about them in a different light with different headings. They explain the 3 fundamental principles of composition, and are follows:

1. Information Value: the way elements are organized in relation to one another
2. Salience: creating information hierarchy in the design
3. Framing: determining what elements go together

Information Value

Given vs. New

One of the main points discussed was this idea of given vs. new. One of the ways designers create a product is to use this idea that we as humans have a natural tendency to progress from given to new information, and consequently, from left to right. A prime example of this is an interview, where the interviewer (given) is on the left, and the interviewee (new) is on the right, as shown below.

Ideal vs. Real

Furthermore, as opposed to the horizontal axis, another way to view a picture is from the vertical axis, and designers call this ideal vs. real. The ideal information is placed on top, and the real information down below. One reason for this could be because we naturally look at the top of a picture first, so designers want to appeal to a person’s emotions first and foremost. Here is an example below:

Center vs. Margin

One final example of information value has to do with the center and margin. In this idea, the main focus is the center and everything disperses outward, as shown below:

Saliency

The main idea with saliency is creating a level of importance, or distinguishing which elements of the picture are more important. It is one thing to get everything on the page and laid out perfectly using the techniques mentioned above, but if everything is of the same value, then there is no contrast and therefore loses viewer interest.

One of the most effective ways you can create salience is by creating a visual balance. In order to create this balance, the “weight” of the picture must be perfect. The way to perform this, as both authors say, is to create cycles by varying elements of salience and non-salience. Here is an example of creating salience through color and size, and a video describing how to create visual hierarchy:

Framing

Framing, as Kress and Van Leeuwen describe, as all about togetherness. Both say that its absence “stresses group identity,” and its “presence signifies individuality and togetherness.” Neither one is good nor bad, it just depends on what look you are going for in your picture or design.